FBI Targets ‘The Base’ White Supremacist Hate Group in National Sweep

From left: Luke Austin Lane, Jacob Kaderli and Michael Helterbrand are accused of plotting “to overthrow the government and murder a Bartow County couple,” according to police in Floyd County, Ga. / AP

‘The Base’ “seeks to accelerate the downfall of the United States government, incite a race war, and establish a white ethno-state.”

By Bill Chappell, Merit Kennedy, and Vanessa Romo

Police have arrested three men in northern Georgia who are suspected
of belonging to a violent white supremacist group called The Base,
saying that they were plotting to commit murder and that they belonged
to a criminal street gang.

A
fourth man, from Wisconsin, also accused of being a member of the
group, was charged on Friday with conspiracy in connection with
vandalism of a synagogue as part of a nationwide series of attacks on
minority-owned properties.

The Floyd County, Ga., Police
Department says Luke Austin Lane, 21, Michael John Helterbrand, 25, and
Jacob Kaderli, 19, were “allegedly involved in a white supremacist group
with plans to overthrow the government” and to kill a married couple
whom they identified as having high-profile roles in the far-left group
Antifa.

The FBI’s Atlanta office “conducted the bulk of the preliminary investigation” into the group, police say. They add that while other arrests have been made across the U.S., the Georgia case is important because a “training camp and leadership was based at a home” in the town of Silver Creek in Floyd County.

The Base was founded in mid-2018 and “seeks to accelerate the
downfall of the United States (US) government, incite a race war, and
establish a white ethno-state,” according to an affidavit prepared by
local law enforcement.

The FBI successfully placed an
undercover federal agent within The Base’s membership in Georgia, and
the agent also came to know Yousef Omar Barasneh of Oak Creek, Wis.

Barasneh apparently joined the group under the name Joseph or Josef, according to an affidavit filed in federal court. He is accused of painting swastikas and The Base’s symbol at the Beth Israel Sinai Congregation in Racine, Wis.

The
undercover agent interviewed online with Lane last July to gain access
to the members-only chat room, the affidavit states. The next month, the
agent was invited to meet with Lane and Kaderli. They searched him to
make sure he was not carrying any recording devices and then asked him
to follow them to a 105-acre lot owned by Lane and his father.

There,
the agent was welcomed as a member. The affidavit alleges that Lane
gave him “a black Balaklava hood and a Velcro Base logo patch to welcome

as a new member of The Base.”

Lane and Kaderli allegedly then told the agent that the next day’s training would “include ‘retreating under fire’ drills and moving-and-shooting drills,” the affidavit states. The stated purpose of the drills was allegedly to prepare The Base’s members for the “Boogaloo” – a name its members use to refer to what they see as the inevitable “collapse of the United States and subsequent race war.”

Two months later, in October, the agent met with Lane, Kaderli and a
person “who crossed into the United States illegally,” identified
simply as “TB Member” in the document. They spoke about their opposition
to Antifa “and ultimately a veiled plan to murder an unspecified victim
or victim,” the affidavit reads.

“Any engagement in anti-fascist activity will carry the death penalty,” the TB member is quoted as saying.

That
same month, another member of The Base, Richard Tobin — who was at the
time cooperating with the FBI, according to court filings — admitted
that in September 2019, he directed individuals to attack and “tag the
s***” out of synagogues. It was part of an event he called Operation
Kristallnacht, named after the night in 1938 when Nazis in Germany
ransacked Jewish homes, hospitals and schools.

Tobin told the
FBI that Barasneh, who was only known as Joseph, “carried out the attack
on the synagogue.” He also confirmed to authorities that the
22-year-old has been member of The Base’s Great Lakes cell since March
2019 and was vetted by the group’s leader, an affidavit states.

Electronic
devices confiscated by officials contained encrypted messages between
“Joseph” and Tobin. In one, the documents say, “Joseph” sent a news
article about the attack saying “something to the effect of ‘here’s what
I did.’ ”

Another message from Joseph said: “Imagine if
across the country on local news, everyone is reporting on new nazi
presence. … Our op will be a perfect [expletive] you to these

if we become terrorists.”

The charging documents
against Barasneh do not identify Tobin by name — he’s called
Co-conspirator 1 — but certain “details match those in the criminal
complaint that was filed against him in November,” The Associated Press
reported.

According to the complaint filed
in Wisconsin, the undercover agent also met “Joseph” in November 2019
when a group of about a dozen gathered in Silver Creek, Ga., for an
in-person training. The meetup included “firearms training, grappling,
medical training and a pagan ‘blot’ ritual where a goat was sacrificed,”
court documents say.

The Georgia arrests were announced on the heels of those of three other alleged members of The Base in Maryland who had built an assault rifle and accumulated ammunition and who also allegedly discussed attending a pro-gun rally in Richmond, Va., slated for Monday. The Maryland trio includes Canadian national Patrik Jordan Mathews, who entered the U.S. illegally last year.

Lane allegedly told the undercover agent on Dec. 6 that he was crafting a plan to kill two local Antifa members. During a planning meeting on Dec. 13, Lane also said he wanted to kill the person identified as TB Member and another member based in Maryland because of concerns that they would connect Lane to the planned killings, if they were carried out.

Lane, Kaderli and the undercover agent drove on Dec. 14 to the
intended victims’ property in Bartow County, Ga., in order to plan for
the killings. Lane later laid out an elaborate plan to gain entry into
the home and kill the couple. Helterbrand was brought up to speed at a
later meeting and said, “This is what I’ve been fantasizing about for
about two years now,” the document states.

The group’s plans
were slowed because Helterbrand said he needed six weeks to recover from
back surgery. They agreed to carry out their plan in late February. The
affidavit ends with a description of another reconnaissance mission to
the intended victims’ house on Jan. 12.

The Base is allegedly
organized into regional chapters, acting in a decentralized way so that
those not involved in a particular criminal act could have plausible
deniability.

Its members also actively agitate on social media networks. For example, one post mentioned in the affidavit said, “No need to wait until all conditions for revolution exist – guerrilla insurrection can create them. Insurgency begins as a terrorist campaign.”

Originally published by NPR, 01.17.2020, republished with permission for educational, non-commercial purposes.

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